


Clarity

by murg



Category: Original Work
Genre: Denial, Depression, Emotional Manipulation, Emotionally Repressed, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, POV First Person, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Attempt, Triggers, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love, not-quite purple prose, pedantic ramblings, triggering as hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murg/pseuds/murg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wasn't <i>drunk.</i> I wasn't, Sophie. It was simply the swiftly approaching precipice, the feel of plastic on my knuckles, the clarity that came afterward, that made it that much more painful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clarity

 

I trace where your fingertips may have skimmed the countertop, groping for some facsimile of your presence, some proof you were ever on this Earth at all. I hold a sort of religious awe with the action, a sort of reverence as big as my contempt. You were here for one brief, glorious moment. You existed. You came, you saw, you conquered. You were the Caesar to my Cinilla. 

Or maybe I was Brutus. Who can tell.

But you were here. I know you were here. You were in this kitchen, this house, this neighborhood, this town. You were in the school and the church and the firehouse and the park where I was too scared to kiss you on July sixteenth, two thousand and five, at eight at night.

I never did kiss you. I never held your hair in my hands or ran my knuckles over your skin or whispered sweet nothings to you on the beach as the sun set in the background as the credits rolled past. I always had to speak somethings. I always had to look at you through the air next to your head. I don't know why. I guess you scared me, in a sense. And it wasn't my emotions for you or any of that narcissistic bullshit that caused that fear. It was you. You petrified me. You inspired a sort of religious dread within me.

 You'd always drag me to that Anglican church you went to and I hated it because I was Roman Catholic and hell, I don't even know if it was an Anglican church. I never paid attention. Whatever you were, it was a blur of protestantism, all those rules that were like but not exactly what I was familiar with, one of the many inconsequential things that people went to war over. It was Other. You were always Other, to me. I suppose I loved you for it. Maybe I still do.

I don't know what to think. I wish I didn't think at all, but the truth is my mind goes at two miles a minute. It roars forward and leaves me in the dust.

My mind is a car. My mind is a sleek automobile with a plastic steering wheel that I run the back of my hands over. It moves because I press my foot down. It turns where I move my arms. And yet still. Still, it evades my mastery.

Because everything will always lead back to you. The fact that you existed. That you sat in this very kitchen and you glanced over your shoulder at me and you smiled and you asked me how often I cooked, to which I replied with some answer. I don't know. It wasn't a nonanswer, I know that much. It was real. Everything I said to you was real. That's how I hurt you. That's how I was Brutus. 

I wasn't _drunk_. I wasn't, Sophie. It was simply the swiftly approaching precipice, the feel of plastic on my knuckles, the clarity that came afterward, that made it that much more painful. It was like stroking silk, do you understand? And the way it'd fold over my eyes, my brain, make all my motions smooth and functional where my mouth spluttered and grimaced and grinned. 

It wasn't premeditated, I can tell you that much. 

When the officer came to see me, I told him the truth, too. I told him I knew exactly what I was doing, but I didn't know why. Or maybe I did. It's muddled. It's complicated. It was simultaneously selfish and selfless in that sort of paradoxical, sick way life can be. 

You visited me, in the hospital. You didn't bring roses or a card. You stared at me with thin lips in a hard line and I wanted to say sorry, I wanted to apologize a thousand times, I wanted to placate you in any way imaginable, but I couldn't lie to you. I wasn't sorry. I would never be sorry. I'm still not. 

Yes, I told you. Yes. In one word I confirmed your every fear. And you just shook your head and your cheeks were dry, your eyes were dry, and I know you didn't mourn for me like I do for you. I was never anything to you. And that's okay. I'm fine with that. I wasn't always. I used to blame you for my situation. But I accept now that I simply have some sort of fatal flaw--hamartia, the Greeks called it, except life's no tragedy or other genre; it just _is_ \--something that makes me subtly incapable of being loved. 

I told everybody the truth. My mother, she cried. She cried and cried, but it wasn't for me. She cried that she was a bad mother. Which she isn't, I swear to you; my mother is a woman and women are flawed because they are human and it happens, it's okay, and this had to happen. 

You have to understand, Sophie. I wasn't drunk. I wasn't stoned. I wasn't anything except myself and for some reason, some damnable reason, I thought it perfectly logical to try to drive myself off the downtown bridge. 

I still think it was logical, if I'm being honest. 

And it's not that I want to die. I don't. That bridge was just reaching for me, Sophie. It wasn't a siren call or a beckoning or a cry. It was a pleasant invitation. Like coming in for a handshake. And I accepted. It's only polite. 

I didn't do it because I wanted to die and I didn't do it because I hated my life and I didn't do because I couldn't stand anyone around and I didn't do it because I wanted attention. I did it because I could.

Like I said, my mind is a car. My mind is a car and I am situated in the driver's seat, like we all are. The rest of my body is a collection of organs and fluids that are simultaneously important to maintain and shameful to display. 

I miss you. 

I miss you so bad. 

So I sit here and I run my hand over the countertop, dirtying it, ruining what might have been you. A trace, a clue. A memento. You were beautiful, Sophie. You were beautiful under the jarring, fluorescent lights with your hair in a frizzy ponytail and your bra strap peaking out of your t-shirt and your dangling earrings and your crooked eyeliner and your ruddy cheekbones and your tongue wet with spit and your off-white teeth. You're gorgeous. You're human. And I love you.

I am Goethe's Werther, Sophie. And that should explain everything. Really. Just a sick, sad romantic. An egotistical, self-absorbed, virginal little boy, bolstered by monogamous fantasies. You were my Diana, Sophie. I lifted you up, I apotheosized you, and for what?

For Hecuba, that's what. 

I'm Hamlet's hired Player crooning sad songs with no emotion. I am the reason people question the legitimacy of their grief. I go through motions with no intent. I end my life on a whim. I deify anyone who gives me the time of day. You stopped being a face and started being a concept after we first met.

I dehumanized you. I dehumanized you and I dehumanized myself and I ruined everything. That car was not the start or the finish. It was the catalyst. It's high school level chemistry. 

You were good at chemistry. You'd stay after school with the teacher and you'd set match after match under an upside down beaker of hydrogen, your own personal Hindenburg. The glory of a Reich. 

Pop.

Your own tiny travesty, contained and monitored and with not so much as a small whimper when it burst. 

Pop. That's it. That's all. Just like uncorking a fancy bottle. I still wonder what it was that fascinated you about that, how you could do that for hours and hours, it seemed. Whether it was the sound or the match or the science or the amazing idea that some air is lighter than others. 

I hardly care. I breathe it all in. I'm greedy like that. It does something to me, I figure. Makes me older, I reckon. I will be an adult when I breathe enough times that I start to appreciate it. 

And what about the car? What the hell about it? Who the hell cares, besides everybody? No one worries over Hecuba's teeming loins or sweet Werther's sorrows or Caesar's conquests.

We'd listen to music, you and I, on Saturday nights, when we were in school and you loved your private Hindenburg disasters. We'd sit and we'd listen to all the deep songs from all the deep artists--the poignant, artistic stuff--and I'd say, unironically, that I found a part of myself in music. 

Which is complete bullshit, I know. Every band is the same; they are profit-driven entrepreneurs, and I don't begrudge them that. I don't give a care what they do with their lives and they don't care what I do with mine. But some lyrics didn't beat around the bush and I was that pathetic wretch that never left his room and it hurt. It hurt to listen to junk like that and I guess that made me feel good, in a sense. I felt like I wasn't as alone. I was seventeen.

Because when I said Saturday nights, I meant twice. I hung out with you on Saturday exactly two times. 

To be honest, Sophie, I think I've talked to you maybe twenty times in my life.

Remember how I said I was young Werther?

Well, I am. Bullet to the head and everything, except that my bullet is a car off a bridge and it's not romantic or pretty or something to be emulated. I'm not Ophelia in the stream with my hair askew and flowers decorating my rosy, pale cheeks. I'm not some pretty, skinny white bitch with her lips pursed in death and her bosom jutting coyly skyward. I bleed out an hour after shooting my own skull because you _can_ miss at that range, you can, and the fallout is slow, weary, trickling by.

Death isn't beautiful. It never is. It never has been. I have no idea why people have these ideations of it. Death doesn't scare me, though, Sophie; you do. Only you. Death is this ultimate negative. It's not something to be emulated, it's not supposed to be some butterfly effect. 

I swear to all that is holy, Sophie, it's not something to be emulated. 

You clutched my hand when I was on that hospital bed, water in my lungs, and you sighed and I remember asking you who the hell you were. And you just sighed some more. 

You asked me why I did it.

And I told you why. 

You asked me why I failed. 

Do you know how much that would have hurt me, Sophie, if I hadn't been in my right mind? During and after the purposeful accident, I was finally in the clear. I was myself. And I looked at you and I just shrugged because I didn't know. I just didn't know. 

You told me you'd pray for me and I told you I didn't want any pity from your protestant God. I didn't want any pity from anybody. I did this to myself and I'd do it again and no, I don't know why. I just know that I can. 

They put me on suicide watch, Sophie. They gave me antidepressants even though I wasn't depressed. They gave me anti-anxiety when my skin finally fit my body for the first time in my life. It was stupid. I didn't need it. It didn't do anything for me. It just made chemicals mess around my brain with my other chemicals and tell me how and when to feel what. I prefer my natural chemistry dictating this, as any person who doesn't need psychiatric intervention should tell you. 

I remember you dragging me to church, anyways. You developed an obsession with it, Sophie, with the _why_. You simply had to know. Why did I do it? What loving creator would make me do it?

You always missed the point. Nobody made me do it except myself.

Maybe I was just exercising my freedom of choice using the least healthy alternative. I don't know, Sophie. I don't know and I don't concern myself with it. I like air, now. I like breathing it down deep and I like riding bicycles and I go to bed feeling safe knowing that the biggest threat to me is myself. 

You thought people bullied me. You were convinced that if you were good enough to me, nice enough, attentive enough, I'd never ever do it again. You felt some sort of obligation to me, to prevent my needless death. We scarcely knew each other before the hospital, Sophie. We went to school and I'd watch you in the park and you'd talk to me a few times. We went out on Saturday twice.

Sophie, you scared me so much when you started to care. Even I didn't care. It was a minor inconvenience at best. Your grief was a tight, dry thing, coiled in you. I was the vessel through which you mourned for the entire human race. You'd ask me about it, constantly. We'd go out and I'd be so happy--I'd be so _happy_ , Sophie--and we'd watch flicks and we'd listen to CDs and then you'd stop and you'd look at me and you'd ask. You'd ask why. How. 

I told you. I told you the same thing, over and over again. I don't know. I could. I could, so I did. I got a ninety-five on my driver's test. I was good with a car. I was really good with a car. I liked cars. I still like cars. I'm part car, after all. Cars are fine creatures, they're as beautiful as any architecture, any Matisse, any fine natural construction.

You conquered me. You made me think you were using me, which flattered me, when in reality you were using my information. How did I know when I was suicidal? How did I know I wanted to kill myself? Had I even been depressed before? Did I fantasize about killing myself?

The answers to which were: I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't, and about as much as any normal person does. 

I still think about jumping when I walk on a bridge. I never think about driving off, though.

Really, I think the best way for me to go is running into traffic. It's poetic, in a sense. My brains splattered by the subject of my mind's fervor. 

Sophie, you were so morbid. You couldn't let it go. I did. I never talked about it, I never _thought_ about it, unless you brought it up. I was like your Hindenburg. I was tiny, contained, a single instance with no obvious consequences. 

I was horribly combustible, Sophie.

Kitchens are supposedly the most dangerous room in a house. It makes sense, if you think about it. I mean, your mom left out the knife set right in front of me. That's dangerous. Somebody could knock those over and trip, you know? I'm sure you thought of it. You were so obsessed with crap like that. 

Sophie, dying is not pretty. It's not elegant. It's not fitting. Dying is unpredictable and fallible, like a shot in the dark. A therapist once told me nobody wants to die. I'm not sure if that's true or not. I'm not sure if I wanted to die. I didn't really think about death when I went off that bridge. I just thought about the steering wheel and the water and the taste of a cherry popsicle on my tongue. Dying is the end. It's when our books run out of pages. Some of us have the decency to lie down in our caskets before the last breath leaves, some of us are so unrepentant we demand they fish our bodies out of the river.

God, Sophie, I don't know. I don't know why I did it. If I did, could this have been avoided? Did you really have to conquer that mountaintop? Did you really need to know? I did it and it wasn't meaningful. Life isn't _Hamlet;_ there isn't some grand message behind every tragedy. Sometimes, a cigar is a cigar and a picture of a pipe isn't an actual pipe. 

I miss you. I miss you and I wish none of this had to happen, I wish I could have been better. I wish I could have been good. I feel like Leroux's living corpse, sleeping in a coffin every night, underground. I feel unwanted and hollow. I have become death and it becomes me. It's not so bad, really. I didn't stare into the face of death before I died; I never _knew_ death until you started asking me about it. Death just isn't. I don't know why I ever thought it'd suit me. Only cars suit me. 

I don't drive anymore. I can't. I get tremors and I don't know why because I don't feel bad about it. I don't get flashbacks or anything. That stuff's for people with PTSD. I don't know why I feel this way. I just know that when I sit in a car it feels like I'm sitting in the bowels of my very being, my own nonexistent womb, and it feels strange, oddly incestuous. 

My body is mine now, Sophie. I feel good about myself. You couldn't let me alone, though, could you? You had to know how it all connected, how the kid in your senior class decided it was appropriate to off himself by crashing through the guardrails of a bridge at seventy miles an hour. You had to know how it felt to have the wind whip through the window , the water smash through the windshield. You had to know what it felt like to have this horrid sense of elation before the fall.

I swear to all that is holy, Sophie, it's not something to be emulated. 


End file.
